Site Mobile Navigation

An American (Vietnamese, Jewish, Catholic) Story

It is for a special occasion one recent Sunday that I pull my car into the Jumbo Buffet & Grill parking lot in Harrisburg, Pa., with three of my four foster Vietnamese grandchildren in tow. Jonah, who is 8, just received his first communion in a magnificent midtown church where Masses are held in English and Vietnamese. Lunch at Jumbo Buffet, an Asian-style, all-you-can-eat restaurant, always involves overeating, but we’re excited to celebrate Jonah’s new status in the church.

The rest of the family soon follows — a total of 10 adults and 9 children, all friends of our foster son, Phuoc Nguyen, and his wife, Loan. My husband, even though it’s Sunday, is in his office preparing for a busy week, so I’m the only non-Asian and the oldest in our party.

Phuoc (pronounced fook), who is 46, became part of our family through his own initiative. He arrived in Harrisburg in 1989 after a decade of trying to escape his country following the fall of Saigon in ’75. He experienced incredible hardship, even torture, until the day the skipper of a Finnish freighter sighted his broken-down boat. After being picked up at sea, Phuoc was sent to a displaced-person camp in Indonesia and eventually found his way to Pennsylvania, where his uncle, an early refugee, ended up almost 15 years before.

Living in a house filled with his uncle’s family, and with no means of income, Phuoc eventually found a job with Menashe, an Israeli house painter who was finishing the exterior of our home. He was incredibly energetic but seemed to be lonely. Each day after work was done, we would invite him inside for water and a few moments of conversation. He didn’t know much English, and so at first there was much hand-gesturing. Over time he would hang around later and later, and sometimes we’d ask him to stay for dinner. Phuoc would speak lovingly of his parents back in Vietnam, and we would help him interpret the nuances of American life. About a year after we first met, Phuoc, then in his 20s, asked us to become his American parents.

Photo

Credit
Holly Wales

We were surprised and touched but apprehensive about any additional responsibility, especially financial. At the time, our children — my husband’s two daughters and my two sons — were all in private schools or private colleges. Phuoc assured us that he would remain totally independent of us, with no legal or financial connection; he wanted our guidance and moral support. The only time he’d expect special treatment, he told us, smiling, was on his birthday.

We agreed, and called our children to tell them of this new, strange arrangement. My husband helped Phuoc, our faux foster son, find a steady job. He began to refer to us as his “adopted parents” and to call us Mom and Daddy (pronounced DA-dee). Sometimes I got too much information about his active dating life before he married Loan, but he could depend on me to make his favorite salad dressing as well as to talk him out of any get-rich-quick schemes that may have caught his eye. In 1996, with tears streaming down our faces, we watched him become an American citizen. (Along the way, he also became a Republican, and has the card in his wallet to prove it.)

The Nguyens are Catholics — at least they have been since Phuoc explained Jesus to his young Buddhist bride years ago. My husband and I are Jewish. We belong to a synagogue, light candles on Friday night and have been known to use Yiddish expressions. Early on, I had to explain to Phuoc that since we were Jews, it wasn’t appropriate to keep sending us birthday or anniversary cards that featured the Virgin Mary. But somehow we have managed to achieve a relationship that includes attending church services for baptisms or other occasions, hosting Phuoc’s family for Rosh Hashana dinner and eating his homemade egg rolls at Thanksgiving.

Today it’s the celebration at Jumbo Buffet. My foster grandchildren all want to sit next to me or have me take them to the endless rows of food stations. Phuoc, his family and his friends chat, and I listen and laugh as if I understand Vietnamese.

I go to leave, and Phuoc — the ever-proud father and foster son — walks me to the door and awkwardly puts his arm around my shoulder. When I’m alone in the car, something sweeps over me, and I feel as if I’m going to cry. It’s not sadness, but wonderment. Of how all this came about.

Susan Silver Cohen contributes to The Patriot News, in Harrisburg, Pa. She is working on a children’s book.

E-mail submissions for Lives to lives@nytimes.com. Because of the volume of e-mail, the magazine cannot respond to every submission.

A version of this article appears in print on July 4, 2010, on page MM50 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: JUMBO BUFFET. Today's Paper|Subscribe